


the 5 stages of grief (as told by poppy li)

by thestarsaretalking



Category: Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Analysis, Episode: s01ep09 Blood Ocean, Flashbacks, Gen, Kinda but not really, Poppy Li Deserves a Hug, poppy and rachel r friends i know this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29313924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsaretalking/pseuds/thestarsaretalking
Summary: Poppy is having a hard time dealing with being rejected from the Cold Alliance job.
Relationships: Poppy Li & Rachel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	the 5 stages of grief (as told by poppy li)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this as kind of a vent fic but yeah anyway poppy deserves better and i love her and i want to give her a hug

Poppy Li knew she was far from perfect. She knew she was disorganized, forgetful, emotional, and impatient. But no matter how bad Poppy’s flaws were, they couldn’t justify her being stuck working in a hectic workplace with an egotistical maniac who steamrolled over every one of her ideas including the shovel, which she even somehow had to fight to keep her own. Or perhaps that was the reason why she fit in so well in the work environment she ferociously despised about ninety percent of the time. 

When Poppy had gotten the phone call saying that Cold Alliance had retracted their job offer due to “artistic temperament,” her first reaction was to try to bargain her way back into the job, insisting that she was grounded and she was fit for it. Nevertheless, her pleas failed, and she was left with nothing except an empty parking lot to scream into as she watched Ian walk away with a smug look on his face. 

In high school, Poppy had taken a psychology class where she learned about the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) that people experience after major life changes, such as the loss of a loved one, a breakup, or job loss, and how not everybody went through the cycle in the order it was listed in. She learned this the hard way after her first break-up where her girlfriend at the time had proclaimed that Poppy was too much to deal with, similar to how Cold Alliance ~~claimed~~ implied Poppy was too intense to work with. 

The two stages Poppy went through, unfortunately at the same time, were bargaining and denial. Her ex-girlfriend had been one of her closest friends and Poppy thought that she could maybe preserve the friendship, even if the relationship had ended, and that maybe, somehow, one day the friendship would blossom again into a relationship. She didn’t want to admit that whatever she and her ex had was gone, and she clung to hope that she could save what was broken as tightly as a child would clutch their parent’s hand while walking through a crowd. 

However, Poppy’s ex-girlfriend had been lying about wanting to stay friends and made no effort to rekindle their friendship, so Poppy spiraled into anger. She tore up pictures of her ex-girlfriend and refused to think about anything that was related to her ex, which was hard considering how her ex was close with Poppy’s friends and everything Poppy loved had some form of connection to her ex. She listened to angry breakup songs about how she’d be better off without her ex and did a good job warding off her feelings until the depression hit.

Depression would always be the worst part of the grief cycle. Poppy Li had been diagnosed with depression in her junior year of high school so she was no stranger to the consuming feeling of hopeless emptiness, but having something catalyze a depressive episode made it feel like her depression had grown an extra arm just to punch her twice as hard. 

Poppy had been in college at the time and went to all her classes wearing her fuzzy brown depression hoodie, the one hoodie she often wore during days that her depression was particularly overwhelming, partly because she usually never had any motivation to change out of it and partly because it was really comfortable and reminded her of the hugs her mom would give her as a child before both her parents decided to stop showing her affection and expected her to learn to be an adult at the age of 5. She stayed up until 3 am unnecessarily coding the shit out of some tacky game she was making for her computer science class to try to distract herself from her emptiness and drank way an amount of coffee that was definitely not healthy for her. 

And after two painful months (that had felt like ten years) of experiencing the stages of grief, Poppy reached the final stage: acceptance. It wasn’t easy to accept that her longest relationship was torn to shreds and gone forever, but she managed to look at herself in the mirror and realize that she had to move on because there wasn’t anything left to mourn after she’d shouted at, cried over, and overanalyzed every last fragment of her relationship. 

Poppy thought that, after she’d gone through the cycle once, she’d have it all figured out, but she clearly didn’t when she jumped right back into the denial and bargaining stages seconds after the guy from Cold Alliance retracted the job offer. The anger stage sped by as it was mostly just Poppy screaming and banging her fists against the concrete support beams in the cold, echo-y parking lot, though her anger hadn’t completely disappeared when she spiraled headfirst into a depressive episode. 

She didn’t consider herself to be a very selfish person and she didn’t think she was too mean at all, but Poppy transformed into a different person when she allowed her intense emotions to swallow her whole. The day after the rejection, Poppy stormed into work wearing her fuzzy brown depression hoodie — not the same one from college, of course, but one that was similar — and made a beeline straight for the refrigerators, where she expected to find her ice cream sandwiches but only found an empty box. This was the second time that this had happened in a month, and Poppy crumpled the cardboard box in her hands as she turned around, searching for the culprit. 

Unfortunately, that was the exact moment Rachel had walked into the room, and Poppy marched over to the unsuspecting girl, who was innocuously grabbing a pack of cookies from the counter, and held up the crushed ice cream sandwich box in front of her co-workers face. “I can’t believe you stole my ice cream sandwiches again! How fucking clear do I have to make it that these are _my_ ice cream sandwiches and nobody should eat them?” 

Her eyes widening, Rachel stammered, “Poppy, I swear I didn’t-” 

“Swear you didn’t what? I know you and Dana stole my ice cream sandwiches last time. What’s it going to take to make you stop, huh, Romeo? It’s great that you’re trying to impress Dana but don’t steal my fucking ice cream sandwiches!” Poppy hollered. Everybody in the office could probably hear her yelling about her precious ice cream sandwiches but Poppy couldn’t care less. She was already stuck in this hellhole so what did she have to lose? 

“I swear on my life Dana and I didn’t take your ice cream sandwiches. Poppy, you have to believe me,” Rachel replied. 

Poppy was about to launch into another rant, the accusation “bullshit” still resting on the tip of her tongue, but she saw the earnest look in Rachel’s eyes and all the anger drained out of her. Sighing, Poppy dropped the box onto the floor and slumped her shoulders as she sat down in a chair and tugged her hoodie over her head a little more, trying to conceal her shame. She folded her arms across her chest and mumbled, “I’m sorry I’ve been so out of it lately. I promise I don’t mean it. It’s just that…” 

Exhaling, Poppy took off her glasses and wiped them clean with her sleeves as she continued, “I guess I just have trouble accepting that I deserve this. I thought I really had a chance of leaving this suffocating place — I mean, it’s not always that bad but it just really feels like I’m stuck here, you know, and maybe I’m just as egotistical as Ian. Maybe I’m just as paranoid as David and as heartless as Brad and as aggressive as Jo. I mean, maybe it’s not, like, a bad thing but, I don’t know, maybe I’m everything that I’ve always hated about other people and I guess that thought just really scares me.” 

“Poppy, it’s okay to be worried about that. It’s not always the easiest to deal with all your worries but I promise you that you’ll be able to find a way out or maybe things will get better here.” Rachel saw Poppy scoff at her suggestion that Mythic Quest would miraculously improve and corrected, “Maybe the first option is more believable but, still, I think you’re gonna be fine no matter where you end up.”

“Thanks,” Poppy cracked a shy smile for the first time in days, “and I’m sorry for calling you Romeo. You and Dana are really cute together.”

“Oh, uh, thanks! And no worries, I get that things are kinda hard for you right now but you’ll get through because you’re, like, the strongest person I know,” Rachel patted Poppy gently on the shoulder before leaving the coder alone with her thoughts. 

Poppy stared at the crushed box on the table in front of her and picked it up carefully. Maybe Rachel was right. Even if life felt pointless and Poppy felt like she was stuck, maybe, just maybe, she would be okay eventually.


End file.
